How YOU Doin?

Feedback is not always easy to give. Or receive. Take the story of the CEO who went in to give his head of sales his annual performance review and found the office cleaned out. Turns out the head of sales left a "note" in his drawer saying that he coudn't face the performance evalution he was expecting he would get. This is a bit extreme. Hopefully, your experiences have not been this dramatic.

But let's assume you have never given performance feedback, like about 60% of all bosses. If you need to create a performance evaluation from scratch, take the person’s job description and break it down into categories. Try not to list more than 12 or 15 areas at the outside. If you have no job description available, search the job title on the internet with the words “job description” included, e.g., “VP of Marketing job description”. Pull out the parts that apply to the role and break it down into categories. Be sure to include soft skills such as influence or conflict management if they apply. If you are reviewing a person in customer service, for example, friendliness and communication skills would be top priorities on the soft side.

Next, either have the person do a self-assessment or include as many people as realistic in evaluating the person in the time allotted. The people to include can be the manager, peers, direct reports or any other stakeholders who know the person well. A simple evaluation can include a rating scale and a box for comments. A more complicated one can include a rating scale and associated questions. A simple 360° process can be purchased at a reasonable price through a coach. (The cost can be as low as $100/person.) A 360° is so named because it takes evaluation information from 360° around the person. It is simply a specialized type of performance review most commonly used by executives and a favorite tool of many coaches.

If you are giving feedback to a high level executive, the most common areas of improvement for executives are listed in the following table by frequency. These percentages were gathered from the hundreds of executive 360°s we have performed over the last decade in our company and in partnership with other companies.

If a person had more negative comments than positive comments in an area, it is considered a “development area”. These development areas show common themes and they are listed in the table by frequency of appearance.  

Most Common Development Areas

Onboarding 12% / 88%*

Results Focus 62%

Problem-Solving 58%

Interpersonal Skills 58%

Delegation 44%

Influence 32%

Communication 31%

Executive Presence 22%

*While Onboarding was only a development area in 12% total of the reports we performed, of those who had recently begun a new role, 88% needed onboarding help in their development plans.

If you need further ideas for competency areas, check out the FYI book by Korn/Ferry. Next, get ready to actually deliver the feedback, or at least talk about it after you have slipped the report surreptitiously onto your employee's desk.

Remember a few key points as you deliver the feedback:

1. Be specific. Include examples as you point out development areas.

2. Balance praise and criticism. When giving the criticism, include suggestions for improvement.

3. Expect some reactions. Allow the person receiving feedback to digest and then have a follow-on conversation after tempers or tears have cooled.

4. Don't forget a development plan. Pick one or two areas that are most important and give the person a little adivce or some tasks to handle those areas. You'd be surprised how far a little advice can go.

It's time to get going on giving some feedback and helping the 94% of your employees, so let's get started!

Attention!

It was December 20 and the VP of Marketing of an e-commerce business was staring blankly at a recent post on Yelp. The post condemned the e-commerce company, claiming their customer service was “abysmal” and their products “far below par”. After several nearly sleepless nights and a tired phone call to the PR person to see what they could do about it, they resolved to carry on without doing anything about it. But the post still haunted her.

Was their decision correct? How hard should they have tried to have the post removed, or please the displeased customer?

Negative press is never easy to take. For any business owner, it can feel like a personal jab rather than a dispassionate discussion of your business. One CEO was so distraught over some negative press about her company that she spent six nights manning the phones in customer service personally. That’s heroic.

Let’s look at the other side of this coin, shall we? To do business, we must garner attention. Yes, that’s right, we have to get others to see us, to look at us, to talk to us, to exchange money and services or goods with us. Communication is the bottom line. And that takes getting the public’s attention. Without attention, our businesses wither and die.

So, if we get negative attention, is that so bad? It certainly FEELS bad. It dampens our spirits. It kills our restful nights. That is actually what it is supposed to do. Remember Robert Kennedy’s quote: ‎"One-fifth of the people are against everything all the time." That’s right. One-fifth. Twenty percent. One out of five. Ok, you get it. It’s a large percentage. If you have five people in your office, at least one of them will never like what you are doing at any given time. It’s time to face the facts and grow up a bit. Not everyone will like us all the time!

Now let’s truly reverse this look and decide that criticism is a GOOD thing. Yes. A GOOD THING. Why? Because it means you are getting enough attention that someone is spending their valuable time to criticize you. It means you are impinging on your market. Truthfully, most of our businesses are never known at all, right? We spend our days WISHING for our articles to go viral, for our products to create massive demand. If you truly want that, start facing up to the hard truth that you will have to be ready to receive some criticism. As Grant Cardone (The Turnaround King) says, “When you start taking the right amount of action and therefore creating success, criticism is often not far behind. Receiving criticism is a surefire sign that you are well on your way.” Ask any major celebrity when he started receiving criticism in full force. It is quite likely right around the time he hit it big.

Back to our VP of Marketing. What if, instead of worrying about the criticism, she marketed so hard that she got 10 positive comments for every one negative one? What if she got so many customers that the one naysayer was drowned in a sea of excitement? What if you did the same?

To overcome criticism, don’t get stuck on it. Just expand above and beyond it. Go big. Speak more. Speak louder. Sell more! And when you get a public criticism, forward it to me so I can congratulate you for getting enough attention. Here's to criticism!

No Excuses EVER

What IS the most important characteristic of a leader? Read any leadership book and you will find tens of possible answers: character, strength, a genius IQ. Our research led us to this answer: no excuses. The technical term for this might be “accountability” or “responsibility” but we like “no excuses” because it conveys the real, raw truth of the matter.

The real, raw truth is that a fantastic executive is able to make things happen and she never makes excuses when she can’t do it.

Take the stories of these two real-life executives. One, the CEO of a technology start-up, ran into trouble with her company. The idea of her company was a unique and ingenious one, but she just couldn’t get any traction in the market. A fantastic executive herself, she ordered an immediate review of herself, with interviews from all of her investors and a harsh but truthful look at her executive skills. She found several deficiencies in herself such as a weak financial background and some difficulties in PR and marketing. She instantly hired a consultant to help her with her PR and marketing, and she found a part-time CFO to fill in her financial gap. She started really kicking the market in the teeth and got on the cover of a major magazine.

Another CEO, head of a $35 million technology company that was in the transition phase from startup to mid-size found himself losing the buy-in of his executive team. He lost his VP of Sales and his Chief Engineer before he called us. Then, when we arrived, he went on and on for hours about how the problem was the founder of the business. The only problem with his excuse was that the founder had been around long before the exodus had begun. It just didn’t add up. This CEO was completely unable to look at his own contribution to the recent problems.

The difference between these two types of leaders is a simple one. The first CEO was a no excuses CEO! She was able to face up to her weaknesses and charge ahead with solutions, unfazed by any critical or difficult feedback she might have gotten. The success of the company was more important to her than her personal pride. The other CEO, unfortunately, was so involved in finding who to blame that he couldn’t even see beyond his own nose.

A “no excuses” executive does not judge his company or his team by whether everything is perfect. That would be the wrong standard. The question is whether he can look at his company or team and, despite everything that is wrong, still make things turn out right. In the process, such an executive might even find that he or she has much to learn or many changes to make before all is well. Despite these difficulties, a no excuses executive charges ahead.

If you aren’t sure if you are a “no excuses” leader, take this short quiz:

1. When something goes wrong, do you usually search for who is to blame?

2. First thing in the morning, do you look at the day ahead and see only problems?

3. Do positive people annoy you?

4. Do you wonder why everyone around you is so much dumber or lazier than you?

5. Do you blame any recent career or job failures on the “bad economy”?

If you answered “yes” to more than three of these questions, you are having a tough time being a “no excuses” leader. You may need to take a longer leadership assessment test to determine why you have a tough time taking responsibility.

We are the first to admit that being a “no excuses” leader is not easy. On rough days or around tax time, we all might wish for a good scapegoat. The hard, unfriendly truth of the matter is that those who have the most success are the ones who can look at any situation and determine how they caused it.

So if you are looking at a financial disaster in your company, or a human resources nightmare, or any of the myriad problems that can occur, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and consider this:

1. Just because you are “no excuses” does not mean you should engage in self-pity or blame. Just acknowledge the situation and get moving on a solution.

2. A good analysis of how the problem occurred goes a long way toward solving it. If you can’t figure it out, get a professional in the area to help you.

3. Don’t get distracted. Just because something is unpleasant does not mean you should avoid it. Put on your riot gear and attack!

4. There’s nothing better than getting it DONE! So take that big, hairy problem, tackle it, get it done and move ahead!

Finally, remember this brilliant quote from Thomas Edison: “We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”

So go find some opportunities! No excuses!